Hot Pursuit (9 page)

STONE GOT
to Pat’s building five minutes after the uniforms and ten minutes before the detectives. Pat buzzed him in and met him at the door; Fred brought him up to date.

The doorbell rang, and Stone buzzed in two detectives; he knew the older of the two but didn’t like him much. “Hello, Harry.”

“Barrington. You mixed up in this?”

Stone shook his head. “I just got here. Fred Flicker, here, found the bodies.”

Fred told his story.

“Okay,” Harry said. “We’re going upstairs and check this out.”

“You might check the apartments on the third and fourth floors,” Fred said. “Somebody might be home.”

“What about the second floor?”

“This apartment is a duplex,” Stone said.

“Everybody stay here,” Harry said, and the two detectives left, leaving the door open behind them.

“May I make some coffee?” Stone asked Pat.

“You sit down, I need something to do. Fred?”

“Thank you, miss, no.”

Stone sat down and was presently rewarded with a steaming mug of strong black stuff.

The detectives returned. “All right,” Harry said, “we’ve got a crime-scene team on the way, and the medical examiner will be here shortly, too. Who are the two dead guys?”

Pat got a notebook from a kitchen drawer. “David Teal and Bruce Palmer.”

“Gay guys?”

“I’ve no idea,” she replied. “I just became the owner of the building a couple of days ago, and I haven’t met my tenants yet.”

“Harry,” Stone said, “you have any interest in my take on this?”

“Not much,” Harry said, “but go ahead.”

“Your suspect is a man named Kevin Keyes, who resides in Wichita, Kansas. He’s an ex–airline pilot who does occasional charter flights, and he’s the ex-boyfriend of Ms. Frank, here. I believe he followed her here after she ended their relationship. Mr. Keyes, or whoever the killer is, probably got into the building by ringing all the doorbells. The guys upstairs buzzed him in. He tried to get past Ms. Frank’s front door and failed. One of the guys upstairs probably wanted to know who he’d let into the building, and he may have come downstairs. Keyes then marched him back upstairs and shot both guys, so they couldn’t identify him. Keyes is registered at the Court Plaza hotel in Times Square, and he’s driving a dark, rented Nissan Altima.

“Pat, you want to give them Keyes’s description?”

“Six-one, two-twenty, dark hair going gray. He’s a bodybuilder and heavily muscled.”

Fred spoke up. “Ms. Frank believes he may be on both steroids and cocaine.”

“A bad mixture,” Stone said. “Pat, would you say that Keyes has a quick temper and is subject to rages?”

“I would,” Pat replied. “And he owns several guns.”

“Who owns this building?” Harry asked.

“I told you, I do,” Pat replied. “My sister made me a gift of it.”

The doorbell rang, and Harry admitted two men with stretchers and another with a large case. He sent them upstairs and returned to Pat’s apartment. “You know what bothers me about this?” he asked nobody in particular.

“The double homicide upstairs?” Stone inquired.

“Nah. It’s too simple—that’s what bothers me. I never walked into a homicide before where I got handed the scenario and the killer on a platter, complete with an address. Jesus, I’m surprised nobody got his Social Security number.”

“I probably have that somewhere,” Pat said, “if you want it.”

“Y’see? It’s all too simple.”

“Feel free to make it more complicated,” Stone said.

“Oh, I don’t have to do that,” Harry said. “It will make itself complicated pretty quick.”

“While it’s getting complicated,” Stone said, “you might send a SWAT team over to the Court Plaza and invite Mr. Keyes up to the precinct for a chat.”

“You telling me how to do my job?” Harry asked.

“
Somebody’s
got to,” Stone said.

“And why do you think I need a SWAT team?”

“Oh, I don’t know: the suspect is a big, strong, angry man who is known to own several guns and who is probably crazed by a combination of steroids and cocaine. If you’d rather just go over there and ask him a few polite questions, go right ahead.”

“You were always a smart-ass, Barrington.”

“And you were always a stupid ass, Harry.”

The doorbell rang again.

“You get it,” Harry said to his young partner.

He left and came back with two middle-aged men in suits.

“I’m Detective Robert Miller,” one of them said. “This is my partner, Dominic Legano.”

“What the fuck are you two doing here?” Harry asked.

“This is our case—the commissioner sent us,” Miller said. “You can leave now.”

“The fuck we’re leaving,” Harry said.

Miller produced a cell phone. “Let’s see: you’re out of the Nineteenth precinct, right? And your captain is Don Haley?” He started to dial a number.

“Awright, awright,” Harry said. “Take the fucking case and stick it up your ass. Come on,” he said to his partner, and they both walked out of the apartment. At the door, the younger man looked back and shrugged.

“Good day, gentlemen,” Miller called after them. He turned to the group. “All right,” he said, “will somebody fill us in?”

Stone and Fred went through the whole thing again while Legano took notes. When he had finished, Miller got out his cell phone again and pressed a speed-dial button. “This is Bob Miller. I need a SWAT team at the Court Plaza in Times Square to pick up a suspect in a double homicide. Name is Kevin Keyes, registered guest, six-one, two-twenty, dark hair going gray. Consider him armed and dangerous. Possibly high on something.” He chatted for another minute with whoever was on the other end of the line, then hung up. “Okay, Dom, let’s go upstairs and view the carnage, see what the boys have to say about the corpses and the scene. Please excuse us for a few minutes,” he said to Stone, “and I’d be grateful if you’d all remain until we’re done here.”

“Glad to,” Stone said.

“You bet,” Pat said.

“Righto,” Fred echoed.

—

ANOTHER HOUR PASSED,
during which men with stretchers brought two body bags down in the elevator. The detectives returned.

“Anybody think of anything else?” Miller asked.

Everybody shook their heads.

“Ms. Frank,” Miller said, “you should give some thought to getting out of the house for a few days. Do you have anywhere you can go?”

“She does,” Stone said.

Legano took down their information, and the detectives shook their hands and left.

“I think it’s time we got you to my house, Pat,” Stone said. “Any objections?”

“Not even one,” Pat said, “but I may have a better idea.”

HOLLY ARRIVED
at her White House office to find Millie Martindale already at her desk, and she was wearing the dress she had worn yesterday. “Good morning, Millie,” she said.

“Morning, ma’am,” Millie said.

“Tell me, did you get lucky last night, or did you spend the night at your desk?”

“Both,” Millie replied. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll bring you some stuff.”

Holly went to the adjacent utility room and made coffee. She came back with two mugs and found Millie sitting across from her desk, shuffling papers in her lap. Holly handed her a mug.

“Any cream and sugar?” Millie asked.

“If you drink it black for twenty-one days, you’ll never have it any other way again, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time, too.”

Millie tasted the coffee and made a face.

“Tough it out,” Holly said. “What have you got?”

“Identities for two of our fuzzy photographs.”

“Shoot.”

“I sort of took a shortcut,” Millie said. “I spent my junior year at Oxford, and I have a friend from those days who’s now teaching there. He’s a couple of years older than me, and I knew he went to Eton, so I had a talk with him. His first year there he knew two boys, identical twins, who had unusual accents. Their names were John and James Whittleworth, and he made them as Arabs, though they didn’t look it.”

“And Whittleworth isn’t a very Arabic name,” Holly pointed out.

“They were a little darker of skin but had blond hair.”

“Go on.”

“I got the registrar’s office at Eton at four o’clock this morning—it’s five hours later there—and they dug up the boys’ records. Their father’s name was Martindale, like my last name, and their mother’s Fatima, which might explain their appearance and accents.”

“Makes sense.”

“Not for long. I researched the father, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t exist. Not the mother, either. There was a record of only one visit to the school by the parents, early in the boys’ three-year stay at the school. They never went home for the holidays, even at Christmas, and their school fees were paid by an official of a private bank in London, Devin’s, which turns out to have Middle Eastern owners.”

“How about graduation? Did the parents turn up for that?”

“Neither of them. A chauffeured car picked them up after the ceremony, which was twelve years ago, and they were never heard from again. Mail to them—invitations to alumni events, pleas for money, et cetera—was sent to the bank and never replied to.”

“Did they go to university after Eton? Most of their graduates do.”

“There is no record of the boys applying for any university.”

“Are there any photographs of them—maybe in yearbooks?”

“None. They didn’t play any sports or participate in other extracurricular activities, except shooting classes and chess. Otherwise they kept to themselves. One other thing, they were tutored in elocution by a young instructor there, and by the time they left school, their accents were indistinguishable from the upper-class English spoken by all the boys, except the Scots, the Irish, and some foreigners.”

“Is there any indication of where they might be now?”

“None whatever—they simply evanesced. No British passport has been issued for either of them, so if they left the country, they had other papers.”

“Well, wherever they are, they have been very carefully groomed,” Holly observed. “What about the third man in the photos?”

“So far, a total blank. Can you ask your friends at the Agency why they believe he spent time at Berkeley? If we can find out when he was there, maybe we have a chance of running him down.”

“I’ll make a call,” Holly said. “Good work on the twins.”

Millie actually blushed. “Thank you.”

“Go home, take a nap, and get a change of clothes.”

“Thank you,” Millie said gratefully, then evanesced.

Holly called Lance Cabot and was immediately put through.

“Good morning, Holly.”

“Good morning, Lance. I have some information for you, and then I’d like you to get some for me.”

“Do you mind if I record our conversation? It’s easier than taking notes.”

“Go ahead. Ready?”

“Ready.”

Holly related what Millie had turned up on the twins.

“That’s extremely good work,” Lance said.

“I thought so. I have hopes for her.”

“Just shows how one personal relationship can cut through the fog and turn up useful information.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s useful in this case,” Holly said.

“Au contraire,”
Lance said, in his best accent. “We now know the two are identical twins—that could be most helpful. We know Devin’s Bank—we might even have an asset there.”

“That would be very helpful indeed,” Holly said.

“Now, what do you need from me?”

“Millie drew a blank on the third photograph, the one who was said to have spent some time at Berkeley. I’d like to know where that information came from and if there’s any more of it.”

“I don’t believe it came from our people. I’ll have some calls made and see if it can be tracked down. Talk to you later.”

Lance hung up.

So did Holly.

—

LANCE MADE
a call to the Agency officer who had helped prepare the file for the president’s intelligence briefing. Her name was Charlotte Weir, and she was a fairly new officer, having joined three years before.

“Good morning, Charlotte.”

“Good morning, Director.”

“You are part of the collaborative effort, are you not, to prepare the president’s daily intelligence briefings?”

“I am, sir.”

“Do you recall that, in the discussion of our three persons of interest—those of the poor photographs—there was made mention that one of them might have spent some time at the University of California at Berkeley?”

“I recall that was said of one of the men.”

“It was said of two that they were at a British private school. They have since been accounted for.” He brought her up to date on the twins. “I now wish you to speak to whoever contributed the Berkeley information, to place a time frame on when he might have attended, and to thoroughly rake all of Berkeley’s records that might tell us more about him.”

“I’ll get right on it, Director.”

“That would please me greatly. Work as quickly as you can.” Lance hung up.

STONE AND PAT
got into the rear seat of the Bentley, and Fred drove them to Stone’s house. He asked Fred to take her luggage upstairs.

“Which room?” Fred whispered to Stone.

“Mine,” Stone whispered back. “Come on down to my office and tell me about your idea,” he said to Pat.

Joan got them some coffee.

“Have you ever flown your airplane across the Atlantic?” Pat asked.

“Nope, but I’ve always wanted to. There’s an awful lot of prep to do, I understand—a lot of paperwork.”

“A client of mine who owns a string of Jaguar dealerships in Britain, Europe, and the States has bought himself a CitationJet4, and he wants it flown to Wichita, where he’s going to do his training. Why don’t you and I fly your airplane over there? Paperwork is what I do, and I can do it fast. I’ve already had a dozen crossings on the northern route, doing ferry flights, so I can show you the ropes. We’ll land in Coventry, which is where both Jaguar and my client live. He’s offered me the loan of a car, if I want to do some touring, and I’ve never had any time to myself in England—I was always in and out.”

“That sounds very inviting,” Stone said. “But what about your business?”

“The business is nascent. I can handle what I’ve got on the phone, and your airplane has a satphone. Also, I can’t work out of my new office until this thing with Kevin is settled.”

“Well, you know the northern route, and I know England. I hitchhiked around the island when I was a student, and I saw a lot of very nice country hotels that I couldn’t afford to stay in. When do we go?”

“I can get the paperwork in hand by next Monday. How’s that?”

Stone turned to his computer and checked the next couple of weeks. “Nothing here that can’t be handled by phone or just later. You’re on, but why do we have to do the northern route?”

“Your airplane has a thirteen-hundred-mile range, and that’s not enough to go nonstop. We’ll fly up to Goose Bay, in Labrador, then to Greenland, where we’ll refuel, then to Reykjavik, Iceland. If we luck into a big tailwind, we might do Goose Bay–Reykjavik nonstop. We can do an overnight there, or we can press on to England. It’ll be about ten hours overall, but we can take turns flying and napping.”

“You’ve already got an office right down the hall,” Stone said. “All my manuals and paperwork are in my flight bag right over there.” He pointed. “So get to work.”

She finished her coffee and did just that.

—

STONE WAS WORKING
on his mail when Dino called. “Word has reached me that yet another of your friends is in trouble,” he said. “Is Pat all right?”

“She is. I got her out of the house, and first of the week, I’m getting her out of the country.”

“Where are you headed?”

“To England, and in my airplane.”

“Your airplane would get halfway there, then
splash
!”

“We’re going the northern route: Canada, Greenland, Iceland.”

“Haven’t you heard it’s winter?”

“The airplane has a heater. You want to come along?”

“Is Pat doing the flying?”

“We’re sharing. She’s flying a delivery back from England, I’ll make the trip back alone.”

“I’ve got some business in London—maybe I’ll fly back with you.”

“I could use the company.”

“How long will it take us, and where do we leave from?”

“A day or two, weather permitting. We’ll leave from Coventry.”

“I’m speaking in Birmingham next Wednesday, so that works for me.”

“Can Viv come?”

“I’ll ask and get back to you.” Dino hung up.

—

LATE IN THE AFTERNOON,
Stone had a call from Detective Robert Miller.

“Just an update,” Miller said. “Kevin Keyes checked out of his hotel early this morning and turned in his rental car. He’s in the wind.”

“That’s bad news,” Stone said. “Did you check the airlines?”

“Yes—no reservation. We’ve alerted the Wichita police, in case he goes home, but it’s a long bus ride.”

“He’s a pilot who does charters, remember? He could have flown out of Teterboro or White Plains, flying a charter or doing a delivery of an airplane. Check the FAA for any flight plans he might have filed.”

“That’s a good tip. Thanks.” Miller hung up.

Stone thought it just as well that he and Pat were getting out of town.

Pat came into his office, and he told her about the call.

“God,” she said, “Kevin could be anywhere.”

“I told Miller to check for any filed flight plans.”

“Good idea.”

“Don’t worry, they’ll get him.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said.